


Ryan

by IWannaDoBadThingsWithYou237



Series: Like A Little Recon Baby [2]
Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Family Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, M/M, slight PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 07:20:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3641556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IWannaDoBadThingsWithYou237/pseuds/IWannaDoBadThingsWithYou237
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been five years since Avery when Brad is presented with another chance to become a father, he takes it but even his doubts managed to resurface to effect his relationship with his son. </p><p>He’s been unable to breathe for a long time, and then suddenly one day he can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ryan

**Author's Note:**

> So here is the second instalment of Like A Little Recon Baby. 
> 
> This is again the POV of Brad and again I'm not sure how it went, I found Brad really difficult to write for some reason so...
> 
> I spell checked and proof read to the best of my ability so if there are any inconsistencies or mistakes I apologise, I struggle with spelling.
> 
> I don't know a lot about ranks in the USMC or anything else to do with the military so if any of that is inaccurate then I apologise as well.

Brad meets Sergeant Jennifer Collins when he takes a training gig at Parris Island. It’s a onetime thing and he finds he rather enjoys the torture that he puts the Marines through, it’s kinda cleansing when he comes to think about it, makes him feel better when he thinks about his own bootcamp experience. 

Sergeant Jennifer Collins is one of the training officers for the female recruits with long red hair she ties away, straight angular features and the same commanding respect that only somebody who is used to leading a team can produce. 

When they go out to the local nearby bar on one of their nights of, Brad is marginally impressed by the way she drinks most of the training officers under the table and can still walk in a straight line. 

“Married to the job” she said holding out her shot glass to clink it with Brad’s and he grins for the first time in a long time “Married to the job” he smiles back. 

To say he hasn’t given much thought to the baby he left behind all those years ago (five years, seven months, three days) is a lie. It had stunned Brad how much he had actually cared about the baby he had only had for twenty four hours and the yearning he felt for another one was downright scary. 

He distracts all of his attention by sleeping with one of his fellow officers, it numbs the endless seeking questions and the constant nagging in the back of his head that maybe he hasn’t made the right decision, that maybe he messed up all those years ago, that maybe he could be happy with this job and still come home to his son.  
He doesn’t like to think like that too often. 

 

Whatever he has with Jennifer is cut short when after the recruits have disappeared for a well-earned shower, she pulls him aside. 

“I’m pregnant” she says swallowing harshly and something collapses inside Brad that he thinks might be his heart. If he was inclined to go into all that romantic, happy bullshit that fathers are supposed to feel. 

“I see” he forces out heart thumping with excitement. For the first time in his life other than anything to do with his career he feels excitement. 

“I would prefer either adoption or abortion” Jennifer continues as they walk around the grounds her voice cold, the same voice she uses when she talks to the recruits “But I thought it was best that you should know and weigh in on the decision” 

The thought of giving up another child makes his stomach recoil and bile build in the back of his throat. “No” he manages to clench out “If you don’t want it I will”

Jennifer scoffs looking him up and down with her wide blue eyes “You?” she asks “You don’t exactly look like father material Brad? Do you honestly know what you would do with a child?” 

He thinks briefly about the apartment where he once had those fleeting twenty four hours. He cannot raise another child there but he thinks more and more about his mom’s place and wonders if that’s the right place to do it. 

“I’m sure I can come up with something” he says causally.

 

It’s a long discussion between the two of them. Brad mentions the fact that he’s been put up for adoption when he was a kid. He doesn’t mention Avery. 

He never mentions Avery. Nobody but him, Angela and the social worker know Avery exists and Brad is perfectly happy to keep it that way. 

He shows up to every appointment sends pictures back to his mom who is more than perfectly happy to have a grandkid (if the screaming down the phone when he tells her is any indication). The sonograms are fuzzy at best and even when he does have a spare moment to gaze at them he can’t make out which sex it is. 

When Jennifer texts him to say she’s in labour Brad salutes his nearest officer, drives to the nearest hospital just in time to hold the little blue eyed, blonde haired, angular featured baby boy. 

He names the baby Ryan. 

 

He takes Ryan home to his moms who spends hours cooing over the baby and then cooing over Brad and then cooing over Ryan some more. 

There’s just something about this that doesn’t sit right with him. He wanted this, he wanted Ryan, he wasn’t in a great place to be sure but he was in a better place than the last time he had held a baby that was biologically related to him. But there is something about the whole thing that now he finds nauseating, he gave up a baby that looked just like this one and now he has another. Like a replacement and the thought alone makes him run for the bathroom to throw up his lunch. 

It itches at his skin when he hears Ryan cry at night, how he manages to give up one son and then have another like it’s a replacement. Some days he wonders what the hell he’s doing, if he’d made the right decision, if he was capable of being a parent. All the old doubts had resurfaced like the scars branded onto his body. 

He was almost glad when he received a recon mission that took him back to Iraq, this time he would be with Ray, Walt and Tromley only this time with no reporter in the backseat and with less of a fucked up command system. 

“And you expect me to raise Ryan when you go off to Iraq or wherever?” his mom said her eyebrow rising accompanied with that look that made Brad feel like a piece of shit that had been scrapped a shoe, it was the look she had given him when he had been a child when he had done something particularly stupid-like that time he had thought it was a good idea to go surfing in the middle of a storm.

“I wouldn’t…Look if you don’t want to then I could…” he trailed off feeling utterly stupid. “Mom if you don’t want to then I can find someone else who can do it or…” in truth he has nobody but he’s grasping at straws. 

His mom nods watching him wearily “You know I don’t have a problem” she says carefully “And if Jennifer wishes to stop by then she is more than welcome” Brad swallows down the bile in his throat and goes to find his duffel bag. 

 

Iraq is different the third time, Ray and Walt are both making this there last one he knows even without them saying and watching the two of them carefully Brad is suddenly extremely grateful that ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is repelled. There is only so much sexual tension that he can take in a small armoured vehicle, even Tromley is restless to get home and takes less pleasure in shooting people. Something must be in the water this time because Ray and Tromley don’t irritate him as much and the command isn’t as fucked up as before, and missions are actually going well. 

Something is very, very wrong. 

“You have a kid?” Ray asks when he sees the only picture of Ryan that Brad keeps with him and he nods swallowing harshly “I have one as well you know” Ray says grinning. 

That makes Brad blink because of all the people that he had expected that to come from he hadn’t expected it to be Ray. Ray hands him a picture that looks creased of what looks like a baby girl with wide brown eyes and brown hair. “Saffy” Ray says smiling “Who knows” he grins that manic smile “Maybe we’ll be in-laws homes”

That’s a thought that Brad knows is gonna fester. 

 

He staggers home to his mom’s house filthy, tired and not in the mood for anything to do with hyperactive children. It’s been a good year and a half and Brad is honestly tired with treading the surface and trying not to drown. 

Ryan was now a nice two and a half and was watching Brad with wide dark blue eyes under his shot of pale blonde hair. “You remember me?” he asked bending down to Ryan’s level and Ryan nods if not shy and quiet. “Your daddy” he says finally. 

Ryan’s shy and quiet around him watching him like he’s an IED that’s about to go off. He watches him with blue eyes that follow his every movement. He answers questions when he’s asked, he follows Brad around like he’s about to be disappear whenever he turns a corner but whenever he needs anything it’s his mother that he runs to, it’s his mother that disciplines him and Brad feels like a stranger in his own son’s life. 

“You could try harder with him you know” she says quietly watching Ryan colour in his book on the couch his face scrunched up in concentration. “I am” he snaps his body on a live wire. 

 

He takes Ryan to the park, watching him climb up and down the rope with concentration. The whole park looks like a child’s version of the marine bootcamp obstacle course and Ryan runs around climbing and playing with people he obviously knows looking every inch of the child that he is. It makes him smile for the first time in a long time. 

And then he hears Ryan shout loud, panicked and terrified and it’s enough to make him jump to his feet and run through the crowds of children to the monkey bars he apparently just fell off. 

Ryan had fallen at least onto the grass but the majority of his face was bruised and bleeding from where it had hit the ground. He wasn’t crying but he looked shocked into silence, the blood steadily dripping down his face from the cut just across his eye. When he looked up from where Brad was bent over him his eyes were wide and shell shocked. 

“Ry” he said hooking him up to his eye level and gently brushing his hair back to see the damage. Ryan didn’t cry just continued to stare at him with wide blue eyes. “Hey” he said gently as his gently probed the cut “it’s gonna be alright, not even a scratch” 

He wondered If Ryan would normally be screaming if he had been with his Mom. 

 

When they got to the hospital Ryan was still not speaking or doing anything other than watching the blood that had congealed on his face. Brad watched out the corner of his eye as the nice Doctor Grey with blonde hair cleaned out the wound placing little butterfly stiches across the cut that was clean cut from the top of his headline to the middle of his eyebrow.

“You his father?” she asked smiling gently taking in Brad’s rather panicked expression with ease “Don’t worry, it’ll be a scratch for a couple of days but it’s not deep enough for there to be a scar”

The curtain was then roughly slammed aside by his mother who had that luck of a woman who had aged a few years in a few seconds and was doing her damned best not to show it. 

“Baby” she said gently reaching out to wince at the stickiness of the blood stuck to her grandson’s face. Ryan’s face crumpled and he reached over out of Brad’s lap where he had been sat silently into hers tears spilling down his face. 

He moved back watching his son being comforted by someone else unable to do anything but watch, he had to swallow down the bile in his throat and desperately try to scrub the itch embedded into his skin and the thought that he this was a horrible decision and that he should be back in Iraq with the sand, and the fucked up command and the gunfire and the lack of food because he had learned his lesson years ago, that he couldn’t be a father. 

 

They had taken Ryan home, Brad driving while his mom sat in the back Ryan cuddled next to her. Whatever small progress Brad had made had been stomped on all over. When he got home he poured himself a tall glass of vodka in the kitchen downing it in one. 

“He’s asleep, pain meds knocked him out” his mom said from behind him. “What the hell happened to you? Something happened seven years ago didn’t it? When you got back from the Royal Marine’s” she sat down quietly and Brad was reminded of what she was used to do when he came home from school upset or after the clusterfuck with Jess. 

“I did something when I got back and I never told anyone” he admitted feeling something wet building between his eyes. 

“What did you do?” his mom said coming to sit next to him on the couch her hands wrapping around him “Baby what did you do?” 

“You’ll hate me for it” he confessed “I hate myself for it”

His mom nodded to herself “I doubt that” she said gently “I could never hate you Bradley, you’re my son and I love you no matter what you did, and whatever you did you better tell me because I think we both know you and Ryan are going to struggle unless you do” 

All he had to do was open his mouth, all he had to do was form the one word, the three syllables. And when it came out it was a broken mess. 

“Avery” 

 

It's been nearly six months when Brad moved back to his old apartment with Ryan near the beaches in California. It was close enough that both Jennifer and his mother had access to him when they both wanted it and should he need to be deployed again. 

It had been easier. Once he had admitted the shameful secret he had managed to regain some level of control and pull his head from his ass and become something resembling a good father. So when he received the call that Ryan had been in a fight in school he saluted the nearest officer like he had done all those years ago when Ryan had been born and then driven his way over there having only just remembered to change out of his uniform. 

Ryan is sat on one of the chairs where they keep the kids a blonde girl with grazed hands sat next to him, there’s something about the girl that makes Brad want to stop and scrutinize every inch of her face but he focuses more on the words the Principal is saying rather than the bruised knuckles and vindictive glee that his scowling son is wearing. 

The numb and gist of it is that another boy had pushed the girl ‘Anastasia’ whose father was on his way over and Ryan had ended up hitting him resulting in a bloody nose. 

He really shouldn’t feel proud but God help him he does. 

He’s halfway through listening to the story of what happened and how he is supposed to ‘help Ryan with his anger issues’ when the door opens and a tall man comes in with hair longer than what he remembered it as comes in with bright green eyes that Brad hasn’t seen in nearly ten years. 

Fucking Hell its Nate Fick. 

Nate gives him the once over with those same eyes, he grins that same grin before bending and turning his attention to his daughter and the thought of that alone is enough to make Brad’s head spin.

It’s only afterwards he gets the chance to talk with Nate alone. “It seems that I owe you and your son a thank you” he says as the kids run ahead of them “Although I think Ana might be pissed that she didn’t deck the brat first” 

Brad laughs a real laugh for the first time in a long time, and what surprises him is that it doesn’t feel hollow or forced. “I should take you and him for coffee and cake or something to make it up to you” Nate says grinning and Brad grins back unable to stop the infectious spread of happiness seeping into every pore in his body. 

“Ok” he says smiling back as Ryan and Anastasia run back from where they’ve been racing each other. Ryan grins at the look on his face and even Anastasia smiles shyly.

“Ok” Nate says with another quick grin. 

It seems for so long Brad has been treading the surface trying not to drown, it seems for so long he’s forgotten how to breathe, whatever is happening now isn’t going to change what he’s done or how much he regrets it but it’s a start. 

Brad can’t breathe for a long time, and then he can.

**Author's Note:**

> Again not to sure how this came out but let me know what you thought. 
> 
> Next Instalment shall be up as soon as I am able to post it, in the meantime please feel free to leave feedback.


End file.
